Tithing vs. Prosperity: Give 10 percent of your income to the church and you'll be blessed

Every once in awhile, the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) reminds its viewers that they need to be giving money.  The way CBN solicits money is by telling people that if they tithe, they will receive financial prosperity.

An example of this is a YouTube video published on July 13, where a woman named Vinitha had a great full-time job lined up a half year prior to graduation from college. The starting salary was more than she requested, according to the clip. The video shows her receiving yearly raises and bonuses, even though her co-workers were not getting them.

While attending college, Vinitha was told by a pastor that the Bible teaches that if you give 10 percent of your income to God, God provides, so she started doing so. "Vinitha loves to give to CBN and Operation Blessing," the video notes, adding, "Of all the things Vinitha learned in college, there is one lesson she will never forget: {Vinitha's voiceover} When God says give, you want to give, you don't want to do it any other way."

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CBN is just one of many religious organizations that push the idea that Christians should give ten percent of their income to the church because the Bible says so.  Like the Trinity Broadcast Network (TBN), it just asks in a nicer way than some, offering the proverbial carrot of prosperity as a reward from God for the donation.  

Paying Tithes Before the Bills.

At CFaith — Freedom in the Word, John Avanzini warns, "To have an effective ministry of giving, you must have proper priorities. Many people pay all of their bills and then tithe to God out of what is left. That may be common practice, but the Bible teaches otherwise." He adds that if people but the business of God first, God will take care of their business and add to their personal "harvest." As to personal financial management, he writes, "Please be wise enough to see that if you tithe and make offerings after paying all bills, you leave yourself at the mercy of your bills. They control your tithes and offerings. But if you tithe first and give generous offerings, your tithes and offerings control your bills."

Type in "pay bills or tithes" in Google and you'll find over 750,000 search results, filled with questions from despairing Christians who, facing limited finances, wonder if they should forgo paying their rent and other bills so that they could pay the church instead.  One of the sites dealing with this issue is ChristiaNet, which has page after page of forum discussions on this. One of the forum headers reads, "A couple gets behind in their bills. Does God want them to pay their bills up to date or tithe without paying them up to date?"

"Give to God first and he will take care of you and your family. Give to God what's first not what is leftover. If he came to dinner at your house, you would serve him before you would your own family. God needs to be #1 in everything you do. He doesn't come first he doesn't come at all. God is tired of being a umbrella and just getting him out when it rains," responded Rebecca.

"I personally know this young Evangelist," answered Sean on the forum. "He and his wife had paid their bills but had come to "tithe or eat for the next week". This was a hard decision to make for a family with four young children. The Evangelist decided they would tithe and trust God. They went to church and never mentioned their hardship to anybody, not even their parents. They didn't go out to lunch with anybody but went home to empty cupboards. When they opened the door to their kitchen, there on the table and counters was a months worth of groceries. The point is, God already knew their need and had sent someone to the store before they even committed to do the right thing. It's a faith thing. Do you really believe? You can actually live by faith and believe."

But others, like Robyn, were more practical with their advice. "I still say: pay bills first with the money God has provided. I would put aside a good offering,first. I would not forget to do that. Look at this. If you do not pay your bills, you will soon find yourself outdoors.  You can believe this: your church won't be there to bail you out when the eviction notice arrive. Especially your pastor."

This is such a big issue that R. Renee and Cynthia Harper's book, The Tithing Hoax, became a #1 bestseller at the African American Literary Book Club.  The authors maintain a blog by the same name, where they write:

• Tired of paying 10% of your income when you can’t afford it?

• Do you feel guilt, shame or condemnation when you don’t pay tithes?

• Maybe you are not receiving the blessings, miracles or breakthroughs that a preacher promised you would receive when you pay tithes.

• Are you seeking answers to your questions about whether you should pay tithes? The Tithing Hoax provides you with biblical proof that the practice of tithing is not for the modern-day Christian church.

The authors also maintain a YouTube channel.  In one of the episodes, R. Renee responds to a Twitter feed where she noticed, "A young woman posted a Tweet stating she used her rent money to pay tithes. As a result she did not know how she would pay her rent. And she was waiting on God to send her the money for her rent."  

Renee thinks that it may be a common problem in the Christian church, where people use their bill money to pay tithes. "Stop thinking you are doing God a favor," she says about this practice. "When you take the money from your rent, the money from your mortgage, your car note, your student loan, what have you, and you put it in a collection plate or you put it in that tithe envelope, that money is going to the church. That money is going to the pastor. That money is not going to God [...] Keep in mind, God will not ask you or require you to neglect your financial responsibilities to 'pay Him.' And you have to think about, what sense does it make to take the money from your rent, your mortgage, your car note, what have you, and give it to the church, the pastor and then sit down and think about what you did, wondering how the hell am I now going to pay my bills? This is called you're wanting God to bless your financial mess."

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Shameful Demands for Tithes.

FBC Jax Watchdogs is a popular blog that is filled with stories about greedy and abusive pastors who demand money from their followers. One of the stories is about a Southern Baptist preacher named Ed Young, Jr. of a Texas megachurch called Fellowship Church. In October 2010, Young passed out "tithing commitment cards," telling congregants to hand them in, with their bank routing numbers and checking account numbers filled in so that the church could automatically take 10 percent of their gross income. Young promised that some of them would become very wealthy as a result. Watchdogs documented this in a video that has some edited commentary:

Ed Young Goes After Access to Bank Accounts of Church Members from FBCJax Watchdog on Vimeo.

Young made headlines when he was urging married congregants to have more sex.  Earlier this year, he and his wife hosted a "sexperiment" to encourage Christians to experience marriage "God's way."

Dallas/Ft. Worth's WFAA-TV investigated his lavish lifestyle, which included a luxurious mansion and private jet.

Young currently has his home in north Dallas up for sale, with an almost $2.2 million price tag.

Rod Parsley, a controversial megachurch pastor who endorsed John McCain in 2008 before being rejected by McCain, was one of 80 right wing pastors who gathered in Texas last summer to plan on how to defeat President Obama in the 2012 election.  He has declared on his television show that the Bible charges that Christians must be militaristic, and cannot dialogue and debate. They are to "fight" or slink passively into irrelevance, watching the nation slide into a "godless, faithless, rudderless and valueless" darkness just like secular Europe.

For three years straight, Parsley has asked for millions of dollars from followers of his World Harvest Ministries and Breakthrough ministries, lamenting that the ministries' budgetary shortfalls were because of demonic attacks from Satan.   But as shown in an earlier clip from the Trinity Broadcast Network, he took a more direct approach, wandering into the audience and snatching a woman's purse and declaring as he rifled through her billfold that she would "open into a new season," apparently meaning she and everyone else who gave him money would receive prosperity (the video is edited with the YouTube users' comments, but well worth watching):

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The founders of the Trinity Broadcasting Network, which aired Parsley's performance, are Paul and Jan Couch, who are known for their lavish lifestyles and outlandish appearances. They are currently embroiled in lawsuits over alleged fraud and criminal activities.

Church Donations Down.

A 2005 report by the Barna Research Group revealed that in reality, despite all the 10 percent tithing talk, the majority of American churchgoers do not tithe anywhere near that amount.

This year in the United States, donations to religious organizations have dropped for the second year in a row, according to a report by Giving USA. Confidence in organized religion is at an all time low.

Perhaps Andrew Sullivan, writing in Newsweek's April 2, 2012, edition, summed it up best:  "Christianity has been destroyed by politics, priests, and get-rich evangelists."

D. Beeksma

One of the growing crowd of American "nones" herself, Deborah is a prolific writer who finds religion, spirituality and the impact of belief (and non-belief) on culture inspiring, fascinating and at times, disturbing. She hosts the God Discussion show and handles the site's technical work. Her education and background is in business, ecommerce and law.

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